Gérard Depardieu has been offered the post of culture minister of a Siberian region notorious for its Stalin-era prison camps.

Depardieu had already fuelled a national row over his decision to leave France for tax reasons by receiving a Russian passport on Sunday and then meeting President Vladimir Putin in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

Now it transpires the actor, who recently called Russia a "great democracy", was also offered the vacant seat of minister of the republic of Mordovia, 438 miles south-east of Moscow.

The region was known during Stalin's reign for its network of gulag prison camps - still Mordavia's principal employer. Human rights campaigners pointed out that one of the members of the punk band Pussy Riot - Nadezhda Tolokonnikova - is serving a two-year sentence there for reciting an anti-Putin prayer in a Russian orthodox church last February.

Vladimir Volkov, the region's head, was quoted by RIA Novosti agency as saying: "If Mr Depardieu desires it, he may be offered the post" after the actor touched down in the capital Saransk for a flying visit. Mr Volkov also offered the Gallic star the chance to settle in the region and choose an apartment or house to live in.

Back in France, Mr Depardieu received support from his ex-wife Elizabeth, who said he had decided to leave the country because "he wasn't getting enough attention and love".

In an interview with RTL radio, she said it was wrong to attack an "extremely unhappy" man who is "inconsolable and who is fighting to try to go on living".

"When someone is as lost as that, should one cast the first stone?," she asked.

"He can go off the rails, he can say any old rubbish...sometimes there's the worst in him, but sometimes the best...I don't understand how one can sum someone up in one act".

His daughter Roxane said: "My father has been put in the dock like a major criminal, but my father is a man to whom one owes respect and not insults."

The actor was branded "pathetic" by Jean-Marc Ayrault for his decision to leave the country over President Francois Hollande's 75 per cent tax on millionaires.

In his first comments since acquiring the Russian passport, Depardieu denied he accepted it to escape the taxman in France, and said that while he may also seek Belgian nationality, he was still French.

“I have a Russian passport, but I remain French and I will probably have dual Belgian nationality,” he said in the interview with the sports channel L’Equipe21. “But if I’d wanted to escape the taxman, as the French press says, I would have done it a long time ago.”

He has reportedly left Russia for Switzerland where he is to attend the Ballon d'Or ceremony for best footballer of the year.

He is due in court on Tuesday morning in Paris for a drink-driving offence after being stopped with more than three times the legal limit in his blood. He risks a maximum fine of 4,500 euros and a two-year prison sentence.